


Ritt der Nachthexen

by chthonianCrocuta (lovesthesoundof)



Series: Die Nachthexen [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 04:27:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesthesoundof/pseuds/chthonianCrocuta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Witches come in threes.</p><p>Written for the HSWC 2013, Bonus Round Three.  Contains sexual content (moderately explicit), graphic depictions of violence (aircraft combat, blood), alcohol (lots), xenophobic slurs (sorry!) and general lack of remorse for all of the above (by the characters, not me...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ritt der Nachthexen

**Author's Note:**

> Written to the following prompt by cyanidecyborg of Team Calliope<3Jane<3Roxy:
> 
>  
> 
> _Rose/Terezi/Vriska (or any two of them)_  
>  _Night Witches, 1942 Russia_
> 
>  
> 
> Looks like I went overboard again. Whoops. Edited from the original fill to fix discrepancies, miswordings and research fails. This is the version you should be reading. Thanks to my team captain Innsmouth for catching a mistake; any remaining errors are mine.

The last flight is yours.

It's a rushed affair. They weren't planning to send you up for another three nights, sooner if they got another plane, but the space has come up unexpectedly and here you are, standing on what passes for an airfield, surrounded by natives and feeling out of your depth. You've flown a Polikarpov U-2 before, dozens of times, but the _kukuruznik_ you remember was nothing like these. Thank God they're not expecting you to fly it tonight; you're just playing bombardier, which is far less to do in still unfamiliar conditions.

You did try telling them that crop dusting does not a bomber pilot make, but this is war. They'll take what they can get. What they get in this case is Rose Lalonde, Anglo-French expat and all around outsider, who, by dint of having family in farming, just so happens to know how to fly a plane. Rather well, if you do say so yourself.

But these ladies fly at night, and it isn't corn they're farming.

You go where you're sent. There's a pilot waiting to embark, stretching her legs and rolling her shoulders. A rope of dark hair, barely deigning to stay in its braid, snakes over the lapel of her jacket. Oh, you know this woman, if only by reputation. She's a seasoned pilot and a born killer - Vrislana Serkeevna...something, fuck, begins with M. She usually flies with Pyrova, hence the dragon painted on the U-2's fuselage in dried-blood red, but Tereza Serafinovna caught a stray shot from a Fw 190 during retreat. The tiny, scrawny figure they pulled out of the back seat was still well enough to swear, but she was blood-soaked and shaking too much to walk. Even being grazed by a 20mm cannon round is more than enough to put a person out of commission for a while. Half an inch to the left and it would've killed her outright. So now Vrislana Serkeevna M-Something is stuck with you: the foreigner on her first sortie. If the idea bothers her, her grin says nothing of it.

" _Ne boysya_ ," she says, and clasps your shoulder.

You nod.

Moments later you're climbing into the aircraft. There's blood on your seat. Pyrova's. Dry, though; it won't damage your jacket. You settle in and prepare yourself as best you can, scarf up, goggles down, trying not to think about how pale Pyrova looked when they dragged her out. She's tough. She'll make it.

Before she gets into the cockpit, Vrislana Serkeevna presses a grenade into your hands.

She doesn't need to say _throw this at any_ ublyoudok _Krauts you think you can hit_. Even if you didn't know, her cold smile would say it all.

The engine sounds dreadful, of course. They always do. _Nähmaschine_ , the Germans call these planes, and _russische Sperrholz_ , but given one of yours can be built faster and more cheaply than one of theirs they can call them what they like. When it's chocks away, you still fly.

And God, do you fly.

This isn't the first time you've been up at night. There is nothing new or strange or mysterious about the experience, nothing about the night that should make it different from any other (though the cloud cover is helpful; no moonlight means they won't be able to see you coming). Every single time in an aircraft feels like this. An old-fashioned crop-duster is a pleasure to fly, too, if you can bear the engine noise: its comparatively gentle speed is far less hair-raising than the breakneck pace of a modern fighter, and it handles like a dream. You're curious about the newer aircraft, of course, but if you had to fly one thing your whole life, it'd be one of these.

...That's not to say that being in a slow, noisy biplane constructed mostly of wood and canvas doesn't have its downsides. It's freezing, for one, what with the open cockpit and poor insulation. Russians are used to the cold, but you're not strictly Russian and you've never acclimatised as well as your mother hoped you would. Engine noise will give any aircraft away, too. One as slow as this could be shot down long before it got into range if anyone heard it coming. Not that they're likely to. Vrislana Serkeevna and your two pairs of wingwomen will cut the engines before you get close enough to be heard. The flimsy construction and low engine output also makes you very hard to detect in the infra-red; unlike modern bombers that would show up on heat sensors, you're cool enough to blend into the background. Your arrival will be heralded only by the eerie whistling of the wind over the support cables.

No wonder the enemy derides you so viciously. They're afraid of you.

The target is closer than you expected. Before you're prepared, the engine cuts out. You feel a prickling in the pit of your stomach. Inside your gloves, your fingers are tingling.

This is it, Rosie. Time to prove you belong.

There's a flicker of light far below. Some poor stupid saps must've found something that burns and tried to get a fire going. Oh, precious. Don't like the cold? This is barely even winter yet.

But if they want heat, you can hardly fail to oblige them.

Over the sound of the wind, you think you can hear a soft laugh from the cockpit. Vrislana Serkeevna has seen the light as well. She's steering the plane with a deft touch, careful not to ask too much of it while it's gliding. You wonder briefly how long she's been doing this: whether she was brought in for existing skills, as you were, or trained by the Air Force. There's something about the way she flies that makes you suspect the former, but you can't imagine her crop-dusting.

You don't have time to think on it further, though, because you're moments away from the target and your hand is on the release - and someone below has finally realised what the whistling noise is, looked up, and cried out the German word for what you are.

" _NACHTHEXEN!_ "

Night Witches.

You drop the payload.

It's the flash that shocks you more than the sound; thank God you're just the bombardier tonight, because you'd be too dazzled to fly straight. The sound is nigh-deafening, but you were braced for it and can bear it. On the ground it would be worse by far.

You've stopped thinking about the people who are down there to hear it, about the voice that called you a witch. It won't hit you until later that, if you've done your job right, you've just killed your first man.

At last the engine rattles back into life. The sky is alight now, rudimentary search beams slicing up the night in search of you and your wingwomen. Vrislana Serkeevna blazes right through one of them. Predictably, a hail of flak follows. This is exactly what you want. If they're shooting at you, they're not shooting at the ladies who still have bombs to drop. On the second pass, after a snap turn at enough Gs that your stomach mistakes the sensation for fear (god, you never knew an old _kukuruznik_ could do this, _wow_ ), your pilot drops something over the side - probably a grenade. You don't hear the crack of the explosion, nor do you see the flash, but one of the searchlights goes dim.

Did she just nail that with a _hand grenade_?

You haven't time to marvel much longer. Another snap turn and she's chasing after a searchlight, diving so low you feel you could reach out and snatch a cigarette from a soldier's pocket. Gunners scatter, faces in the dirt. Only once you're out of range do you realise that would've been the perfect moment to toss your own grenade into the mix. _Relax, Frenchy,_ you snark at yourself. _Breathe. What's a couple of gs and a few hundred bullets between friends?_

You pull the pin and drop the grenade when she buzzes the next gun crew. You don't see if it hits anything.

Once the final set of bombs has fallen - you know it by the flash rather than the sound, overwhelmed as your ears are by the clattering engine and the rattling anti-aircraft guns - it's time for a swift exit. Yours is the last sortie of the night; there isn't much darkness left to work with, and the final task ahead is making sure that you and your wingladies make it back in one piece. Fortunately, Vrislana Serkeevna isn't in the mood to hang around and show off. She banks, and you're away over the treetops. Damn close to the treetops, too. These planes are designed to fly low - so low, in fact, that there's no point in you carrying a parachute. It wouldn't have time to open. If you go down and can't land safely, you're finished.

That's the thought in your mind when you first hear the distant buzz of approaching engines.

The thought that replaces it, unsurprisingly, is _oh fuck, here comes the cavalry_.

At the back of your mind you'd been expecting this. It's the end of the night, and not the first time tonight that the 588th has crossed swords with the Luftwaffe. They already knew you were out here, so there was a decent chance they'd catch up with you no matter how stealthy your approach. All the same, you feel your stomach fill up with dread when you get your first glimpse of the two Focke-Wulf Fw 190s on your tail. Something about aerial combat is more terrifying than the flak from the ground - perhaps it's the moving target; you can't say for sure - and despite that popular opinion still flags the older Messerschmitt Bf 109 as a greater threat, you don't like the 190 at all. They call it the _Würger_ : the shrike. Shrikes, called "butcher birds" by some, impale their prey on thorns and barbed wire. You've seen their namesake in action, and the comparison is apt. Where they go, carnage follows. If Vrislana Serkeevna is worried, though, you can't tell; the figure ahead of you seems as steady as ever, and the U-2's course doesn't budge an inch.

Once they get within machine gun range, though, all hell breaks loose.

If you thought the display of aerobatics over the searchlights was impressive, this takes your breath away all over again - and not just because of the g-force involved. She's picked up one of the two 190s within the first ten seconds, the pilot obviously deciding she's the greatest threat. The other is being taunted by your two wingwomen; you suspect they'll try teasing it into following one of them while the other opens fire. Just running is also an option, but a U-2 is so slow that you'd have trouble shaking the Luftwaffe off -

But not if you're Vrislana Serkeevna, apparently. In that case, all you have to do is pull a loop and come out shooting. There's a distinct difference in the way she and the Luftwaffe pilot are firing, too, and you have to put that down to the different weapons loadout. Despite the fact that the 190 has two machine guns to your U-2's one, and four cannons besides, you're more convinced you can hear individual shots when _he_ fires than when she does. It's not a _dkdkdkdkdk_ noise, it's a _drrrrrrrk_. A blur. You've known for a while that the ShKAS machine gun fires fast, but it's never hit you just _how fast_ until now. The rate of fire is obscene. No wonder it has forty-some different ways of jamming.

If you were superstitious, you'd be worried about tempting fate.

The 190 vanishes from your field of view for several seconds, and your heart's in your throat - surely he has a lock on you by now - but then it zips over your head, close but harmless, after firing only a handful of shots and hitting with what seems to be about three. Another _drrrrrrrrk! drrrrrrrrk!_ from the ShKAS; Vrislana Serkeevna seems to be laughing at the feeble effort to shoot her down.

It occurs to you then, amidst the lightning flash and rattle of machine gun fire, why it is the Luftwaffe pilot hasn't managed to kill you: he can't match speeds with you. You're too _slow_. If he tried to go this slowly in a modern fighter, like his 190 or a 109, he'd stall the bloody engine. On top of that, the few rounds he's managed to put through the wood-and-canvas _kukuruznik_ have gone straight through without causing any appreciable damage. Likely he'd have to hit the engine, the prop or the pilot to take you down, and judging by little Pyrova's refusal to die upon being hit even that last one isn't guaranteed. Doing all that within the tiny windows of attack Vrislana Serkeevna is giving him must be damn near impossible.

You're not winning in spite of flying a terrible plane, you're winning _because_ you're flying a terrible plane.

As the _Würger_ wails past again, once more failing to damage your clattering _Nähmaschine_ , you find yourself laughing - and you keep laughing all through the mad dance they call a knife-fight, Vrislana Serkeevna and your old Polikarpov going head to head with a man in a Fw 190, until the enemy breaks off, smoking, and lands poorly somewhere in the snow.

It's a sad day for the Luftwaffe when one of its fighter pilots gets his ass kicked by two girls in a crop-duster.

You're still chuckling when you climb out of the cockpit and pull down your scarf to breathe again. Yours was the last plane to land; Vrislana Serkeevna's games with the 190 made sure of that. There's a small cluster of pilots and ground crew waiting to slap you on the back and grill you about your first sortie, but you can't manage details right now so you just tell them, in what you hope is Russian, that you're okay.

You're okay.

It's still a little hard to believe.

A commotion from the first aid tent distracts you and the crowd: Pyrova is emerging, shirtless, shoulder in bandages, sounding distinctly uncomradely as she shouts back that her comrades should know better than to keep her sitting on her _zhopa_ when there's something interesting going on outside. Vrislana Serkeevna goes to meet her. You hear the names "Vrishka" and "Reshka" pass between them; between that and the embrace, cautious though it has to be, you know they're close. Very close.

"Frenchwoman!" Pyrova calls to you as they disengage moments later. "I see my sister has not killed you! Good!" You shake your head, grinning at her as you approach. There's no _way_ those two are sisters, but you're not about to say anything in case you offend her; once Pyrova starts up a person can expect to spend the next half hour hearing about every sin they've ever committed. You'd never know it to look at her now, tiny and already shivering in the cold. "Come inside, come inside. Vrishka and I have a little bet between us, and a big bottle for settling it."

This turns out to mean they're getting you disgracefully drunk, which you suspect is allowed to slide because a) you survived your first sortie, b) Vrislana Serkeevna bagged her first 190 and c) Pyrova survived getting nailed by a fighter cannon. The bet, as it transpires, is on how much vodka it will take to make the Frenchwoman fall down, which given the circumstances (and the startlingly good vodka) is just fine by you. After the first couple of drinks Pyrova is still shivering; amidst good-natured cursing of her name, her compatriot takes off her jacket to - oh, no, she's taking off her shirt and giving her that instead. Probably doesn't want blood on her jacket. Shirtless, she cuts a far more impressive figure than Pyrova does; she's broad-shouldered, strong, scarred dark and light in places from God only knows what. She has a tattoo on her bicep, a spider with an anchor on its abdomen.

...Marinova. That's it. M for Marinova. The mariner's daughter.

Once they're both more reasonably clad, they're looking to you for a toast. You raise your glass. Being in such company has shaken your confidence in any flowery speech you might improvise, so you simply say, " _Za vas_."

Pyrova grins at you. " _Salut!_ "

You are all just drunk enough on a mixture of vodka and adrenalin for this to be fucking hilarious, and it takes a minute or two for you to stop laughing enough to clink glasses and drink.

For the next while you listen, drinking as steadily as they do, not adding much to the conversation beyond smiles and laughter. For once they come easily to you, hearing Marinova tell her sister in arms all about the fine knife-fight she missed, and how the mangy German dog fell out of the sky in shame at being outflown by a woman. It's near enough to true. You think all her stories are that way, embellished just enough to make them legends instead of memories. It helps that she's telling them to Pyrova, who will call her on any bullshit she doesn't think is justified and egg her on otherwise.

They're not the same without each other, you think to yourself. Marvellous, yes, but...diminished, from this.

"I want," you say, and you think you're speaking English instead of Russian but who cares, "to fly out with you. _Tous les deux_." Oop, and that's French. You're all over the fucking place. "You, you, me, three poor saps to shit in the - 'scuse me, sit in the back seats... We'll tear a bloody swathe through 'em, ladies. A red swathe."

Pyrova repeats this in high, sharp-edged Russian, grinning with all her crooked teeth, and Marinova throws her head back and laughs. She slings an arm around your shoulder and pulls you into her side, presses her forehead to your temple and murmurs something into your ear. It's too thickly, darkly Russian for you to understand after this much vodka, and it causes your insides to squirm pleasantly. The faint tang of her scent, fuel and blood and alcohol and something salty, like the sea, makes you lick your lips.

You think you want to taste her.

Wrapped up as you are in this revelation, you don't realise that Pyrova is moving until she's kneeling in front of you. Her willow-twig witch's hands have come to rest on your thighs. It's strange to be on eye level with her for once, and stranger still that she is neither grinning nor scowling.

"Tereza Serafinovna," you say, somehow (God knows how) managing to pronounce all those syllables perfectly, "what are you doing?"

She slides one hand around and under your knee (the nerves sparkle in response) and lays the other against your cheek, a Homeric supplicant at the mercy of a benefactor.

"You may call me Rezya, if you want," she says softly, "because I am about to kiss you. And then fuck you. If you want."

Ah. Not drunk enough to fall _down_ , then.

You're too drunk and too busy kissing her to articulate it, but you think it would've taken a lot less vodka than this to make you fall from grace.

Everything seems to start happening more quickly after that. Perhaps it's just the alcohol making you slow, but the sequence of events that leads to Pyrova's - excuse you, _Rezya's_ hands inside your undone shirt ( _fuck_ that's cold!) is a little lost on you, as is the one that ends with you in Marinova's - you're in Marinova's lap, oh, yes, Marinova's in on the deal, _hell_ yes, this would have needed precisely _no vodka at all_ to sound good. " _Alors,_ " you ask with a lazy grin, " _comment je vous appelle?_ \- Oh, bugger, French, sorry - "

She chuckles. You feel it all the way down your spine. "Vriska."

Vriska. You like that. Oh, _God_ , now she's kissing your neck, yes, you like that a _lot_. If you weren't so drunk you'd probably be embarrassed by the sound you just made, but even with Rezya laughing and pressing her finger to your lips for quiet you just feel hot and dizzy. How the hell are they both still so capable? Oh, right, Russians. Cast-iron constitution, legendary alcohol tolerance...yeah, you had a fireball's chance in a Siberian winter of keeping up. Oh well. If you didn't trust them with your life - and apparently your virtue - you wouldn't've started drinking.

Between them they get you on your feet. Most of the work is Vriska's, but even with a torn-up shoulder Rezya is surprisingly strong for her size. She's a surprise to you in general: Vriska is your Type, dead on, tall and broad-shouldered with a thick mane of hair you can wind your hands into, but little Rezya feels viscerally good in your arms and is a frankly _astounding_ kisser, and you suppose you've always had a little flicker of admiration for her as well. You do your best to communicate as much without words. If you take the intermittent giggles as a good sign instead of a mocking one, which you think is a safe bet, you're doing pretty well.

If you had the brain power to protest, you might have stopped them from stripping you of your shirt and jacket. It doesn't matter for more than a moment, though, because they've turned you between them and now you're pressed against Vriska, half on and half inside her jacket. Her skin is so warm that you moan, just a little, and without a uniform shirt in the way the leather of her jacket feels delicious. Rezya is soft against your back, another surprise - she looks as though she's made of sharp corners - and then Vriska's kissing you and dear _God_ , you could swear before a court of law that the bottom has just dropped out of your stomach. She lacks her sister's deftness, but she's so overwhelmingly possessive that it doesn't matter. You will take brute force. Brute force is fucking fantastic. Brute force can keep kissing you until it bruises, thanks, and what's Dexterity up to? Nipping your ear, that's great, she can - yeah, no, actually she can do the thing she's doing to your neck, that's even better - oh, shit, that hand's going all the way down, isn't it, and under the cloth, oh, _fuck_ yes, even the _thought_ of that feels like a touch because you know _exactly_ how wet you are right now and how good that's going to feel and your whole body feels like a struck piano wire, tense and singing with a note of desperation -

The first touch of Rezya's fingertip whites out your nerves for a second. You think you cry out, but you're kissing Vriska, and between that and the haze of sex and alcohol it's lost to your memory. You know you cry out when she starts kissing the other side of your neck instead. How something like this has never featured in your wild imaginings is beyond you. Rezya whispers something against your skin - you think she's saying you smell good - and the feeling makes you shudder and gasp. You're panting now, your breath shallow and rapid, and more and more of the breaths out are turning into little _ah, ah_ sounds you can't seem to stifle but you think that might be a good thing, because when one of them comes out a little sharper or heavier than the rest you hear an answering sound from Vriska. You think she likes hearing you. The next time Rezya's fingers do something particularly good, which doesn't take more than a few seconds to come around, you stop trying to hold back; the resulting moan, soft but ragged in all the right places, causes a muffled curse. Oh yes, she's definitely enjoying that.

Maybe when all this is over you'll have to take them somewhere far out into the middle of nowhere, where no ears save these two and the wilds can hear you screaming her name.

As if she could hear that thought in your mind, Vriska grasps your hand and guides it to the waistband of her trousers. The angle is awkward, but you're more than happy to try and after some struggling (and multilingual cursing) you at least manage to provide a little friction. The rich, deep moan you get in response is worth the struggle, and the way she rocks her hips into your touch is more than compensation for a little discomfort in the wrist. You'll definitely have to do this with them somewhere more suited, when you're less drunk and less required to fight a war, but for now this will do. This will definitely do. Rezya's hand feels fucking miraculous - shit, can anyone reach to - she's cooing against your shoulder, actually cooing, a birdlike trill in her throat. Something must be good. Oh, is that her other hand you can feel between you? You think that's the back of a wrist - yes, she has everything under control. From the movement of it against you you think she might - oh, wow, she is, she's doing everything to herself that she's doing to you, exactly in time, and that's...oh, it's just the alcohol making you mushy and sentimental, but it feels like being connected. It feels like making love, and you might not admit it even under torture but after going through Hell and coming out in one piece that is exactly, _exactly_ how you want to feel.

You reach back with your free hand and hold on to her hip, and her tiny whimper makes you wonder if she feels the same.

After that point you don't think much. You're too clouded, too drunk on sensory input to analyse it. All you know is that everything is glorious, blinding, that you're caught between them and rolling with their motion, that you're getting close to breaking point and both want to break and want to stay like this forever, and it suddenly occurs to you that they're kissing each other over your shoulder and that's when you come, just like that, a shock, biting down on Vriska's jacket to stifle your cry. She shudders, gasps. One hand grips the back of your head, fingers tight in your hair; the other is against Rezya's back, pressing the three of you together so close that all you can feel is skin and leather, no air.

"Roshen'ka," she breathes.

You'll take it, but only from these two.

Your knees feel soft as butter. You don't know how Vriska manages to get you as far as the cot, especially with Rezya clinging clumsily to your back. She must've come right after you, quiet enough to go unnoticed. Next time you want to watch her - not because she's beautiful (she's not), but because she's interesting. And a little bit yours, perhaps, after tonight. You're certainly a little bit hers.

Here's to the witches three, your next toast will be. To her, and her, and yourself, and the whole that you think might be greater than the sum of its parts.

You huddle between them in a tiny bed, your breath clouding like dragon smoke in the freezing air, and as the light turns golden with the dawn, you fall asleep.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Glossary follows. If I've missed anything, please let me know.**  
>  _kukuruznik_ \- crop-duster, lit. "corn-cutter"; a nickname for the Polikarpov U-2 (later Po-2)  
>  _ne boysya_ \- "don't be afraid", used in this case to mean "trust me" - to literally say "trust me" would sound like a command  
>  _ublyoudok_ \- "bastard"  
>  _Nähmaschine_ \- "sewing machine"; derogatory term for the U-2, from the rattling of the engine  
>  _russische Sperrholz_ \- "Russian plywood"; derogatory term for the U-2, from the construction  
>  flak - anti-aircraft fire, from German _Flugzeugabwehrkanone_ , aircraft defence cannon  
>  _zhopa_ \- arse  
>  _za vas_ \- "to you"; a simple Russian toast  
>  _salut_ \- "to your health", a French toast  
>  _tous les deux_ \- "both of (them)", here meaning "both of you"  
>  _Alors, comment je vous appelle?_ \- "So, what do I call you?" See below for why.  
>  And finally, the title is a play on _Ritt der Walküre_ , "Ride of the Valkyries" from Wagner's Ring cycle. Trust me, you've heard it.
> 
>  **Quick Russian names primer.** First name, patronymic, surname. Patronymics are made up of your father's name plus an appropriate ending, which in the case of women is -ovna or -evna depending on the father's name. Example, Serafinovna. This means Tereza's father's name is Serafin, "serpent" or "the burning one". Firstname Patronymic is a polite way of addressing someone - difficult when they're a foreigner and don't have one. Rose thinks of people by surname because it's shorter. All three names in a row you won't hear spoken unless it's a head of state, and even then only maybe. Nicknames are even _more_ complicated. You can't predict what nicknames are used for any given name, any more than you'd know that Sally is a nickname for Sarah if nobody told you. From what I can gather, the more you mess with a name or add bits on to it, the more familiar it gets. The nicknames in this fic are built with that in mind, so "Vriska" is not as familiar as "Vrishka", "Reshka" is more familiar than "Rezya", and as for "Roshenka"...well, you get the idea.
> 
> If you're still reading, congratulations - you have far too much patience. Thank you.


End file.
